Hot answers tagged anonymity
42
My answer pokes at the original question. What makes you think that they don't get caught?
The CIA and DoD found Osama bin Laden.
Typical means include OSINT, TECHINT, and HUMINT. Forensics can be done on Tor. Secure deletion tools such as sdelete, BCWipe, and DBAN are not perfect. Encryption tools such as GPG and Truecrypt are not perfect.
Online ...
30
From some experience with law enforcement and forensics, I can say one of the biggest issues is that ISPs really don't want to have to track users. Once they get beyond a certain level of management they lose 'common carrier' status and become liable for an awful lot of what their customers may do.
Also, many countries do not want to pass on information to ...
26
TOR is better for you than it is for people in countries whose intelligence services run lots of TOR exit nodes and sniff the traffic. However, all you should assume when using TOR is that, if someone's not doing heavy statistical traffic analysis, they can't directly correlate your IP with the IP requesting resources at the server.
That leaves many, many ...
25
One of the most important aspects of an attack like this is covering your tracks. There are lots of different ways to do this, as it depends on the technology. To address your specific questions:
When they DDoS: If the flood was coming from their own machines, then it would be fairly easy to track them. The problem lies in the fact that they aren't using ...
21
Source code consists in a bunch of text files. The contents of a text file are exactly what a text editor shows, so you can control that "visually". Beware of revision control systems such as CVS or Subversion: they can automatically replace some specific tags in source code (like "$Id$") with an identifying string which may contain the current date and ...
16
Just because your traffic is passing though a proxy it doesn't mean you are safe. "Transparent" proxies will transmit your ip address using the X-Forwarded-For HTTP header. There are also cookies that can be used to identify you, such as flash's evercookie. You can even be fingerprinted and tracked by the extensions you have installed and what versions ...
16
You would also need to be careful of the fact that your ISP is in a position to see that 'your IP address' is using Tor, even though it can't tell what you're using Tor for. If conditions are so hostile that you could be brought under suspicion simply for appearing to be clandestine, then you should take care to use Tor everwhere except on an Internet ...
15
In addition to the answers that have already been given, another reason it is so hard to catch anonymous is because anonymous can be anyone, literally. I mean this in two ways. First, hackers can use a combination of malware, spyware, and bots to access and use/loop through other peoples computers anywhere in the world; thus, making any computer, ...
15
Tor does not always protect your ip fully when you need to interact with the end node. You can check your efforts with online checks like this.
What has worked for me on every check I've tried is JanusVM. It runs as a VM, which you use as a proxy for your hardened browser VM. Janus uses Tor, squid, dns-proxy-tor, and privoxy to cover your ip. It is very ...
14
There are NUMEROUS ways for a hacker to cover their tracks..
Here is one very generalized example:
A hacker can compromise a third party machine and use it to do attacks on the hackers behalf. Because the system is compromised, the hacker can delete/modify logs. A hacker can also piggyback machines, such as, log into machine A, from machine A log into ...
14
One real world example - when you are naked in your shower, not doing anything wrong, would you like it if everyone came by and took pictures? Or televised your shower for the world? Probably not.
Another example - if I send a love letter, or write a will dividing up my savings, should that be published on the front page of the national papers? Again - no.
...
13
Buy gift cards in cash.
Bonus points for extra cloak & dagger shenanigans like buying cards in distant cities.
More bonus points for paying in advance to use up the card's value so you don't keep it.
Use a Live CD for all website activity. Don't mount any permanent storage devices.
Via anonymous proxy services (probably TOR) to establish a VPS or ...
11
It does give you considerably more protection than browsing directly. There are some identified weaknesses which offer potential routes to attack your computer, however these can be mitigated using normal protection on your machine (ie patch/av up to date, run as unprivileged user etc) but the only real weakness in terms of compromising privacy seems to be ...
11
Well I responded to some posts above that had incorrect information, but I figured I should just post my own response to better explain.
Anonymous is made up of basically 2 subgroups:
Skiddies (script kiddies) and newbies who have only the most basic security knowledge, and just sit in their IRC and basically be the pwns for the attack. These are the ...
11
They know what are the TOR exit nodes addresses. So they just check your address and see if it matches with one of the exit nodes.
Exit nodes are known to the whole TOR network, if you decide to run one exit node, then you should advertise it right? Or else no one will use it. Then people will know your IP is a ToR exit node. Simple.
11
If you want to be anonymous and are worried about geolocation, don't grant websites access to your location. You will be prompted about whether to allow a website to access your location before the website can use HTML5's geolocation feature to locate you; make sure you don't allow it.
More generally, follow all the standard strategies for surfing the web ...
10
Voting in a polling booth definitely has advantages as you can enforce that a voter is isolated. That makes internet voting difficult, but not impossible. In general we want some of five properties:
Ballot Secrecy - That each voter's choices remain secret.
Integrity - That each voter's choice is included unmodified in the final tally.
Untrustworthy ...
10
What is the best way to browse the Internet anonymously?
Best is difficult when you havn't given the parameters of interest.
Get cash.
Get a deck of standard playing cards.
Shuffle the deck of cards at least seven times.
Remove everything from your person except locally acceptable clothing, the playing cards, and the cash.
Walk to the nearest public ...
10
There's a whole discipline devoted to extracting information out of computer files and systems: computer forensics.
Computer files are relatively easy to make anonymous. Relatively to network traffic, that is: files are just a bunch of bits, whereas network traffic carries a lot of information through timing. On an absolute scale, anonymity of nontrivial ...
10
First off all, leaving no traces on your equipment is paramount. And there "live CDs" or "live USB drives" (same idea) are your friend. If the government finds an actual physical live CD in your possession then that can attract further scrutiny. Putting it instead on, say, an SD card might help your chances a bit. Store the card in a camera with a few ...
10
None that I know of. And I believe this is because.. I don't think the solution (implied by the question) is a good solution/proposal.
Not only because hashing function may have collisions (even if it has a very low probability, the impact would be major, so why should we add such a risk ?) but also because you have another problem prior to hashing: unless ...
10
If the service is working right, you can't.
You can just work with the information that is supplied to you, unless you can gather access to the anonymous mail sending service. This could be possible if you work for a LEA or are able to break into the service (but that would be illegal, of course).
The information that is supplied is the body of the mail, ...
10
Nope, the exit node can only decrypt the message and make the request, but he is not aware of where the original host is located, the only node that knows where the person is located is the second node. This is due to the layered encryption Tor uses. Every node only knows the next and previous hop, but not the whole path.
Nope because of 1
Nope because of 1
...
9
There are two (four technically, see link below) basic problems that need to be solved:
How do you prevent false voting (coerced, bought, multiple votes, etc)?
How do you protect the person's right to voter privacy?
To solve problem one you need to secure the voting station (the website), the connection to the website, the computer browsing the website, ...
9
You should use a live cd like BackTrack. This comes with TOR and software for breaking WEP and WPA2-PSK. Then you can go war driving... are you old enough to drive?
Also brush up on your OSI model, the MAC address is only needed by the data link layer and is there for scrubbed off by whatever router you are behind. However, some routers log what MAC ...
8
First off, you need to realize that you're asking for anonymity and confidentiality. Those don't always go together, and if you don't keep both goals in mind, you will wind up with confidentiality (which is what SSH, SSL, and OpenVPN are more designed for) but miss out on anonymity.
Second, you really need to read some documentation on whatever solution is ...
8
Legalities and ethics aside, the following could theoretically provide a reasonable level of anonymity:
A Live CD, e.g. one of the Linux variants
An internet connection not owned or traceable to you, e.g. an unsecured WiFi connection
An SSL VPN with an exit point in a country with laws to protect your information and purchased anonymously e.g. by mail ...
7
Strategies to stay anonymous online:
Use Tor. I highly recommend using Tor and Torbutton (Tor kindly provides integrated distributions of all the software you need to use Tor). Tor protects your anonymity while browsing the web and helps prevent the end site from learning your IP address. See the Tor web site for more.
You might want to use one of the ...
7
The anonymity provided by Tor stems for the large number of cooperating nodes; a "private Tor network" looks like ultimate counterproductivity. Wait, no, a private Tor with peer authentication is even better in that role: anonymity is so much more guaranteed when you make sure of who you are talking to.
Nevertheless, Tor is free software so you could ...
7
Boot to a live CD containing Tor bundle, for the activities you want to be anonymous. Or, boot to a live CD and use a VPN.
See also:
Different strategies for online anonymity and their +/-s?
How much can I trust Tor?
Surfing anynomously
How to browse the Internet safely?
What are the pros and cons of a VPN
How can I use a VPN to protect my privacy
How do ...
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